Massachusetts News

March 9--The federal government has forced the City of Lawrence to abandon its historic system of government in order to institute a race-based system of voting.

The U.S. Justice Department sued in 1998 with the demand that the city completely scrap its at-large voting system and adopt electoral districts in order to maximize the voting power of the city’s Hispanic population.

The suit was suspended very quietly last December without appearing in any newspaper. 

The federal government backed-off because more Hispanics were elected to citywide office in Lawrence in the November, 1999, election. Apparently, the city will be allowed to keep a mixed system that elects some city councilors by district and some at-large. But the Department may revive its suit depending on how the city redraws its district boundaries after the 2000 census.

This means that the city will have to consider the matter of race when redrawing its boundaries. Assistant City Attorney Bob O’Sullivan tells Massachusetts News that the U.S. did not demand an ethnically gerrymandered system, but the city will have to take Hispanic identity into account when it redraws the districts.

Misusing Federal Law

When Congress passed the Voting Rights Act in 1965, its purpose was clear XXXX to prevent states from preventing blacks from voting.

But the federal courts soon interpreted this as the right to cast a "meaningful" vote or not to have one’s vote "diluted." This usually meant that governments should arrange election districts so that the largest possible number of blacks were elected.

Soon, civil rights organizations and officials in the U.S. Justice Department devised a system of "racial gerrymandering" to create as many "majority black" or "majority Hispanic" districts as possible.

People like Lani Guinier proposed systems that were "as creative as poll taxes," says University of Delaware historian Raymond Wolters.

President Clinton nominated Lani Guinier to be assistant attorney general for civil rights, but withdrew her when her articles favoring racial quotas came to light. He then nominated Bill Lann Lee, but the Senate refused to confirm him. Clinton then gave Lee an "interim appointment," which the Constitution allows the president to make when the Senate is in recess. When Lee’s appointment expired and the Senate still refused to confirm him, Clinton named him "Acting Assistant Attorney for Civil Rights." He has been exercising that "temporary" office for over two years.

Supreme Court Gives Notice

In 1993, the U.S. Supreme Court began to demand that states stop what it called a system of "political apartheid."

Their notice came after the Bush Justice Department insisted that Georgia, which is 27% black, contrive three rather than two "majority-black" districts out of its eleven congressional seats. But the Supreme Court stopped this and said, "Racial classifications of any sort pose the risk of lasting harm to our society."

But the Justice Department has not stopped and continues to demand that cities maximize the voting power of minority groups. Therefore, the Department sued the city of Lawrence for its failure to comply with such demands.

And if the city does not provide enough majority-Hispanic districts, the suit may begin again.

"The Justice Department has paid no attention to the Supreme Court’s consistent rulings," says Abagail Thernstrom, Lexington, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of Whose Votes Count? Affirmative Action and Minority Voting Rights.

"Without using the words, Bill Clinton’s attitude is the same as Andrew Jackson’s: ‘The Supreme Court has made its decision. Now let the Court try to enforce it,’" Prof. Wolters tells Massachusetts News.

"Since the Department of Justice won’t enforce the orders of the Court XXXX it is really engaged in massive resistance to the Court’s interpretations XXXX plaintiffs have to go one-by-one" with lawyers like Chester Darling of the Boston-based Citizens for the Preservation of Constitutional Rights. He says that once again the federal government has turned a law requiring non-discrimination into a demand for racial preferences.
 

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